Question

I am exporting an Excel worksheet from Microsoft Project and trying to import that exported worksheet into an existing worksheet in Excel.

It’s working correctly, however, there are string date representations (stored as m/d/yy hh:mm AM/PM) that just won’t format correctly, even if I select Format Cells in Excel’s GUI and try to format as a date. The strings just don’t change.

What can I do? Is there code I can place in my import sub? Is there a better way to export via Project so that the dates are formatted correctly already?

Here is my current sub used for importing the worksheet (saved via Project):

Sub Import_from_Project()
    Dim wbSource As Workbook, wbDestination As Workbook
    Dim wsSource As Worksheet, wsDestination As Worksheet
    Dim DTAddress As String

    DTAddress = CreateObject("WScript.Shell").SpecialFolders("Desktop") & Application.PathSeparator

    Application.ScreenUpdating = False

    Set wbSource = Workbooks.Open(DTAddress & "Import.xlsx")
    Set wbDestination = ThisWorkbook

    Set wsSource = wbSource.Sheets(1)
    Set wsDestination = wbDestination.Sheets(6)

    'The range below is the data I'm copying
    'Only columns B and C contain the strings that I want to convert to date
    With wsSource
        .Range(.Range("A2"), .Range("C2").End(xlDown)).Copy wsDestination.Range("A3")
    End With

    'Pseudocode to loop through strings and convert to dates
    'With wsSource
    '    .Range(.Range("B2"), .Range("C2").End(xlDown)) .FORMAT TO DATE?

    wbSource.Close SaveChanges:=False
    ' wbDestination.Close SaveChanges:=True
    Application.ScreenUpdating = True

End Sub

I assume I would have to use the CDATE function, but I’m not sure how it fits in with the pseudocode above:

Format(CDate(stringDateRepresentation), "m/yyyy")

EDIT: If it’s important, I’m using Office 2010.

Answer 1

1. Format the column as dates
2. Then use this code to overwrite the cell. Assuming that A1 has a date which is stored as string

Code Example

Columns(1).NumberFormat = "m/d/yy hh:mm AM/PM"
Range("A1").Formula = Range("A1").Value

The above is an example, for a column full of values, you have to loop through the cells and perform the above operation.

ScreenShot